We have newsgroups, Skype, LinkedIn, why another one? What role does/can this site fulfil?
Personally I am not a big user of linked in and the discussion there seem a bit linear. I like Skype, real time chat is super valuable. I feel that the newsgroups are too locked up. E.g. It is pretty hard to send someone a link to a newsgroup thread. I think this site could become a valuable resource… Your thoughts?
I like it but I think most of us are really get use to newsgroup. There are several years of discussion there and it’s hard to move to other platform. Keep also in mind that in general, Clarion developers are older than standard developers 
Maybe this will cause a few of the newer guys to surface. There was at least one person at CIDC2013 who honestly had not heard of nntp and I have seen the same thing outside of Clarion folks too. On the other hand, until now there has not really been anything worthy of replacing a newsgroup for that kind of interaction.
Also, I am keeping a watch on this meta.discourse thread in case they end up creating a bridge or migration for nntp but I am not holding my breath 
I agree with comments from Brahn, discussions on LinkedIn are limited, and the SoftVelocity news groups are a company controlled resource, and locked up, therefore making it difficult to use, and sometimes not so accepting to a bit of “topical discussion” from time to time (which is vitally important).
Comments by Mauricio are also valid, there is Alot of very useful information in the newsgroups, that needs to be saved.
I stumbled across clarionhypensoftwaredotcom quite a while back, and used it for a while, it has been useful. But am not so sure that this is complete and kept up to date.
Agree something needs to be done.
Thanks Brahn
The newsgroups is a tricky one. My main problem with them is that they are so inaccessible and NNTP is surely on the way out, right? As you noted, @Mauricio mentioned there is a lot of history there and that gives the newsgroup a huge amount of momentum and historical relevance (if you have a copy of the history). The fact that they are a company controlled resource is good and bad at the same time so that is a tough one too.
It would be great if there is a way to import all the info of the newsgroup to this site, don’t you think?
Yes and no. In some ways it is nice to start fresh but it would be good to have an archive somewhere. I would be concerned that importing from newsgroup to here would just be too overwhelming.
This is why i used clarionhypensoftwaredotcom for a while, the details were online and searchable.
A clean start is the best approach.
The site still appears to be online http://clarion-software.com/
It is by no means all of the available groups though and I have no idea how up to date it is or even how legal as I thought access is supposed to be behind a username/password for all except com.lang.clarion.